


Spin Control: Snippets and Outtakes

by Trovia



Series: Spinner's Verse [2]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Backstory, Body Image, Careers (Hunger Games), District 2, District 4, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Hatred, Television, Unrequited Love, marketing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-05-16 17:32:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5834455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trovia/pseuds/Trovia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assorted deleted scenes from "Spin Control," as well as outtakes from the oft-talked about Haymitch POV fic that never got anywhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The one where Haymitch falls in love

**Author's Note:**

> I've promised this often enough, so here goes: several scenes and snippets connected to my fic "Spin Control." Some of them are scenes that I cut from the bigger story, which usually means they were replaced by something else that worked better, and I don't consider them "canon," as it is. Others are taken from the Haymitch POV story that I've often threatened to write, but never finished. None of them are beta'd, which you should fear because I'm usually anal about getting beta and almost everything I've put on AO3 is beta'd. Also these are all stuck in various draft stages. I'd always thought I'd polish them if I should ever post them, but apparently that isn't happening either. 
> 
> I'm going to add tags and warnings as I go, since I'm not sure yet what I'm going to end up posting. 
> 
>  
> 
> This first one I have for you here would have been the first chapter of the Haymitch POV story. Every time I look at it, I end up cutting whole chunks from it. I'd probably keep doing that, if I wouldn't post it now; I don't consider it a finished work. I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. It has its moments, I think. 
> 
> As for warnings, here be some discussions of body image issues, as well as a thirty-three-year-old lusting after an eighteen-year-old who he still considers a kid. There are also mentions of a suicide and of childhood physical abuse, and the whole thing is set briefly after Haymitch detoxed in rehab. The rape/noncon warnings of SC carry into this story as well. Such a happy fandom. Barely any warnings apply. :p

At first, it’s hard. Everything is hard. Odair is everywhere now, it seems, and Haymitch isn’t so sure how he feels about that – that guy who he likes, sure, who he’s got a lot of positive feelings about in general, but who’s walked into his district and his house and taken residence, claiming space in Haymitch’s life. Making Haymitch sleep. Making him get up. Making him eat, and not just anything, but certain things, and at specific times, infusing his life with that routine that Haymitch remembers, dimly, from when he was young. From observing other people’s lives, too. From the Capitol, a little, at times. Get up in the morning, eat, do other things, eat, maintain the machine that is your body. 

Soberly.

Doesn’t help that the guy is Finnick fucking Odair, of all the people who could possibly have come to Twelve. Haymitch isn’t altogether certain how he feels about that, either. He can still remember that one Games, must have been the 68th, when Odair returned to the Capitol alongside Mags, and suddenly he wasn’t… Suddenly Haymitch looked at him and thought _man_ rather than _child_ , and it made him feel like a pervert of some sort. Never mind another couple of years have passed and Odair _definitely_ isn’t a child anymore, doesn’t mean Haymitch forgot about that. Like it put Haymitch on the side of the Capitol a little bit. Looking at Odair still gives him all manner of reactions, the visual of him alone, those cheekbones, and those shirts they have him wear that always show a bit more collarbone than somehow seems decent, and fuck, that ass. Nobody has a right to have an ass like that. When Odair makes magazine covers, which is often, the pictures barely get manipulated; it’s other models who get manipulated to look more like him.

It’s a normal human reaction, Haymitch tells himself. He knows this, intellectually, and he knows he shouldn’t be giving a fuck, especially when everybody generally agrees that Odair’s the sexiest man in the world. It doesn’t mean anything except that Haymitch is alive. But of course, he can’t forget what people having that kind of gut reactions means for Finnick. And then, that man… kid… shit, that _man_ is suddenly everywhere in Haymitch’s world, and not giving a fuck turns out to be a lot harder without liquor. His couch smells of Finnick. Finnick makes the food appear that Haymitch eats. And Finnick makes him sleep, and he makes him get up, and it should be driving Haymitch insane. It does, too, in a way, but on some other level it really doesn’t. On some other level, he feels as desperately dependent on it as on the booze, in an equally dangerous way. 

Odair doesn’t spend every night at Haymitch’s bedside, in that chair of his. Some mornings after he didn’t, Haymitch wakes up, with his heart pounding against his chest and his hand clasping the knife under his pillow so much his knuckles hurt, and when finally the arena fades, he expects movement in the corner of his eye. He expects Odair. But nobody is there. And he almost panics, pathetically. And he so very much needs a drink. 

It’s hard. It is. It’s so obviously hard that it would be plain ridiculous to claim it wasn’t. Haymitch tries to not do that to himself, because if you won’t set your own head straight, nobody else is going to do it for you. It’s just been some weeks that Haymitch showed Odair the forest lake, after Wintermas, when he told him he wouldn’t have survived his return to Twelve and sobriety without him. It’s true, too: The world is different when you’re sober, and Haymitch can’t say for sure if the ways it is better even remotely make up for the many ways it’s terrible. How everything is so crystal clear in all its glory. How everything hurts, always, on that bone-deep level, and on that other level in his chest, and how he just needs it _gone_. He can taste white liquor on his gums, all the time, as sharply as if he’d just rinsed out his mouth with it. He doesn’t want to be here – here in Twelve, here in his body. He wants anything but, and it’s hard to remember why he should want to stay, when everybody else – Swagger, Lyra, Alsey, everybody – has left, each in their own way. Funny how only his dad did it the regular way, falling prey to pneumonia, like isn’t uncommon in the Seam. 

Odair is an aberration, none the least in that he has chosen to come to Twelve, spend time with Haymitch, and then, he’s chosen to stay. It’s a weird display of agenda in this world of theirs that doesn’t allow for any. 

Life gets better though, slowly, step by step. Taking steps, itself, gets if not easier, than more doable, and then it’s less of a strain. _Take it one step, one day at a time_ , the shrinks in that Capitol druggie place had been saying, and maybe, just maybe not everything they said was crap, even though Haymitch was lying through his teeth about what he felt and thought throughout. One day, he has started sleeping on his own most nights. Odair sitting at his bedside is a crutch, and it eats away at the few remains of his dignity, once his original plan to hole up and die had been scratched. He’d been looking forward to that at White Feathers, as it is. Haymitch is used to readjusting after walls grow out of the ground in front of him, though. Sleeping alone in his own fucking bed’s a start, even if the idea of turning off the lights while he does makes cold sweat appear all over his body. It’s hard to gather that he was so far gone before that he wouldn’t turn on any lights anymore; he wouldn’t wash, either. Good thing that Odair never saw. 

He almost has a life now, Haymitch thinks, waking up in his bed, sheets stiff from old age but also clean and always smelling of laundry detergent. Getting up and remembering to listen for noises at the door, because he has a housekeeper now and a nosy Odair-shaped permanent guest. But no, nobody’s in the hallway when he trudges to the bathroom. Brushing his teeth, looking in the mirror only when he has to, and anyway he has a hard time with mornings; he isn’t altogether awake. He takes a shower, the first of many, he’s sure. And as he’s flipping through the soap options, he fleetingly considers maybe doing that less often. He doesn’t think he’d manage, but a small voice tells him that it’s quite something, the fact that the thought even occurred to him. His shrinks had talked about that, too.

He dries his hair with a towel and gets dressed, in clothes that are always clean now and that get mended automatically if he doesn’t pull them out of Noreen’s reach in time to do it himself. Then he’s downstairs, where Odair’s already puttering around in the kitchen. He always lets himself in, though rarely comes upstairs until he knows Haymitch is up. 

“I made coffee,” the other victor says with barely a glance in Haymitch’s direction while Haymitch hovers in the doorframe, until he remembers he doesn’t have to hover in his own fucking doorframe of his own fucking house, shaking off the weird hesitation and stepping in. Finnick is fiddling with a contraption that Haymitch vaguely recalls having maybe seen in one of the cupboards once, a long time ago, when he still opened those now and then. “Your cup’s over there,” Finnick continues when Haymitch doesn’t, giving him a quick smile. Then he bends over his work again. “I found this on a shelf,” he announces. “It’s got a power outlet, here. There’s got to be a cable somewhere. It’s old, but I bet it can be repaired.”

“What’s it do?” Haymitch asks, too tired still to make more of an effort. 

Finnick shrugs. “I think it boils eggs. Or possibly it makes jam? I’m not really sure.”

“If you don’t know what it does, how do you know it’s broken?”

Finnick looks up, mouth open to answer, then closes it again after a moment of contemplation. 

He smirks coyly. 

“Isn’t everything broken in Panem?” he says, and Haymitch can’t help it; he huffs a laugh. 

This is what normal has to feel like, he thinks, dropping onto a chair at the kitchen table. Somewhat dubiously, he eyes the cup of coffee that has been placed there for his taking. Its contents are steaming, so Finnick poured it only once he heard his steps on the stairs. It’s all strangely domestic, and if he racks his brain, he can even remember times his life has been like that before: Sitting at the kitchen table, skinny teenage legs crossed at the ankles, watching his mom stretch vegetables into something like soup. Those afternoons when his dad wasn’t home, and Haymitch didn’t have to keep a careful ear on whether he was returning; if the old man had seen them together in this companionable way, he’d just have hit them both. Haymitch had sat at Alsey’s table like this, once or twice, awkwardly shuffling his feet under the chair and wondering if he should offer her merchie parents a hand with anything, although Alsey’s mom had said no the first time he tried. Perched on a bar stool at the Three quarters during Wintermas, comfortably, half-dressed and feeling adventurous, watching Beetee, in his bathrobe, making tea. 

Odair has his back turned to him, still bent over the egg boiler or jam machine with that total focus you can probably only drag up if you’re a victor on a desperate chase to fill your days with something to do. Knowing him and his weird hobbies, he’s probably already been on one of those runs of his. And Haymitch kind of wants to snort about knowing that the only reason Odair hasn’t gone to buy bread rolls for breakfast is because sometimes, recently, Haymitch has been tagging along, and Odair wants to give him the chance of coming again. And he’s trying to be casual about it. It’s all a nice little amateur therapy exercise; Haymitch has gotten well-acquainted with the professional version of that in ‘rehab’ and isn’t sure he’s all that comfortable yet with a repeat performance, Twelve style. 

Doesn’t mean the whole thing doesn’t make him feel weirdly… warm and… safe, as stupid as that may sound. It’s a crutch, the things Odair’s been doing for him, all that focus on him, but the thing with those is, they enable you to walk if otherwise you couldn’t. 

Odair’s a _friend,_ and that’s so special, it makes something twist inside of Haymitch in that way… _fuck._ He hates this. He’s not… He thinks of Conny, and Chaff, and Beetee, and he doesn’t think that concept will ever get _normal._ How can it be _normal_ , how can people just walk around _expecting_ something like that in your life, that there’s somebody who’s decided to _do_ things like that for you, like you _matter_ to them? 

Thoughts like these are too _hard_ and too _much_ and how do other people manage to have these on a regular basis without being completely consumed?

Maybe the friendship thing is a victor thing, a survivor thing. Maybe other folks only think they know friendship, then talk about it as if they knew all. Victors are former tributes that have seen other tributes die, who’ve seen the things people are capable of. Most people would kill their ‘friends,’ in a Games. That’s just a fact. If you’re Capitol and you have no problems really, your life’s never been in danger and you’ve never been starved, what do you even need friends for? Haymitch’s not sure. He tries not to think about the Games, anyway, because things go wrong in his head sometimes in a terrifying way when he does. That’s another thing liquor used to take care of for him.

In the corner of his eyes, Odair is shifting his weight, bending over the kitchen counter to study that kitchen appliance that’s apparently so fascinating, and _fuck._ If Haymitch was still fifteen, he’d have blushed something bad right about now probably, desperately telling himself that it wasn’t a man he was reacting to like that; small grace that at least that’s a thing you can grow out of, realize it’s okay for it to be a man. Fuck, though, that _ass._ You could crack nuts with that… _geez, get a grip._ It’s like that man’s a walking and talking embodiment of sex, it’s like _porn_. And how _shitty_ a person does Haymitch have to be to think that about a _friend,_ about Odair of all the folks in all the districts. A person who’s got reactions like that is exactly the last person Odair is needing in his life, in his district life that should be his reprieve.

* * *

At the 68th Games, Finnick Odair was eighteen years old. That wasn’t stopping anybody from forcing themselves on him. For two or so years now, the Capitol had even been doing it in public, like there was nothing to it, like Finnick was a real adult and not just trapped in a body that towered over everybody. They styled Odair to make his features look less soft and young. Didn’t make it true, though. When the kid appeared at the Training Center in Mags’ wake that season, athletic and slender where he’d formerly been ever so gangly, everything about his face suddenly so masculine, and those _eyes_ that Haymitch kept staring at whenever he was too drunk to control himself and not drunk enough to ignore it… It was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. He knew well enough that it was just a physical reaction, nothing to do with real feelings, considering the boy was eighteen, and he and Haymitch had barely ever talked except as part of a group. But it was the physical reaction he was having to _Finnick Odair._ You didn’t have any business thinking words like _delectable_ about a kid that age, not if you were Haymitch. 

It got him thinking, at the time, though, was the thing, as far as he could still think clearly while chugging down booze by the bottle. And it didn’t even have that much to do with Odair as a person, who even Haymitch could recognize could as well have been a picture, a character in a porn movie… well. That wasn’t quite true. He kept staring at Odair’s eyes because they were _expressive_ , because they made you feel like you knew things about Odair – sweet delusion. But yeah. Odair was just… It was a physical thing. 

It was so _ridiculous_ , him, Haymitch, even feeling things like that. Having reactions like that, like a part of him kept demanding to feel _feelings_ although that part had become this useless, irrelevant appendix. It was the 68th Games, after all, and Haymitch wasn’t as bad off yet as he would be four years later, in the year before his little breakdown. But he was drinking, a lot, and he’d stopped fooling himself about how he wasn’t an addict. He’d accepted that about himself. Not that it mattered since he had no intention to stop drinking, but he couldn’t have stopped, either. Most days, he liked being a drunk. It felt good, it was a comforting explanation for a lot of things, and it was his. It was win-win: He could give the Capitol what it wanted this way. 

Booze made everything around him be further away; it kept him so busy functioning that he didn’t have time to think about all the other things. Like how he’d just helped get two more children killed, and hated himself for it, and hated the part of him that couldn’t follow Swagger’s example. Like how he was a leftover back home, not a person. 

But then he looked at a boy… man, _fuck_ , like Odair, and it _did_ things to him, and it made him think… It made him shake off that grim determination to live through his life with that focus on how it would end soon. It made something stir inside him. It reminded him of Beetee, the good times they’d used to have. How once he’d entertained that crazy notion that they could have something more together, maybe.

The booze had killed his dick dead about three years before that Games; it never so much as twitched anymore. But apparently it couldn’t kill dead his _brain._

_Give it time,_ he told himself sarcastically in those days. 

It was Ralda who made him talk. It was always Ralda who made him talk. Well, not about his _dick_ but about, about the things that shouldn’t be important and somehow still were. Haymitch is protective of Chaff, Beetee and Conny something fierce, but fact is, the four of them get along so well because they’ve figured out how to understand each other without ever saying anything. 

Ralda had chosen to befriend him seemingly out of the blue, back when, when suddenly a letter of hers had arrived in Twelve that talked about random things, about the plants on her balcony, how she was missing her uncle who lived too far away to visit, how she was worried about her fellow victor, Terence. Ralda made him want to _share._ She made him want to have words. 

“Ah, it’s nothing,” he still waved it off when she approached him that Games, following him to the Training Center roof, wind chimes blaring and enabling conversations. “Chaff’s gonna make my head explode if he waxes more poetry about that tribute of his.”

“What’s wrong, Haymitch?” she’d repeated in that frail voice that somehow still was firm. Bony and tiny that she was, as if the wind might blow her away, Ralda had so many demons of her own to battle, but she also had things that were important to her, and Haymitch was one of those for some reason. 

Haymitch hardened his jaw, looking anywhere but at her, down at the Capitol streets. It was at night and city lights were dazzling everywhere like stars. 

“Do you think,” he heard himself say, but his voice sounded too loud in his ears, so he stopped. Pressed his lips together. Felt silly and awkward and younger than he was. “I’ve been thinking about this thing. About if I should even think about it. If I should just put it out of my mind.” Fuck, that made about as much sense as you’d expect after half a liquor bottle. 

“That’s a little hard to say if I don’t know what that thing is,” Ralda said, arms tightly wrapped around herself in the corner of his eye, leaning against the railing and looking up at him. He’s not that tall, but she is… was still much smaller. 

Clearing his voice, Haymitch tried to not stay so aware of the force field he knew was almost close enough to the railing to touch. 

“Thinking about… about being with people.” He had to say it loud enough to be heard above the wind chimes, but he felt desperately awkward. He felt stupid even saying it. He was a _drunk._ He was a pathetic, child-killing, fat drunk out of control of his life. “About… having… somebody, you know. Finding somebody. If that’s, if that’s even a thing I should consider could happen.” _I can’t even get it up anymore,_ he didn’t say, of course. His voice grew quieter with every sentence. “If that’s a thing I should just put to rest.”

He _had_ put it to rest, he had thought, maybe not consciously, but still. The thing with Beetee had ended at about the time of the 57th. Snow had stopped selling him just at around that time, and he’d stupidly thought that maybe now was the time for a new start. Alsey had been a long time ago, though. Catriona Wink had stayed a one-time mistake, thank heavens. The district was making clear how they all felt about him, and Beetee had gotten distracted with other things, never knowing where Haymitch’s mind was wandering. It was bizarre, even thinking about this. 

But in Twelve, you grew up and you got a shitty job but a nice girl and you got married, and you had children who’d take care of you once they grew up. And here Haymitch was standing on the Training Center roof, and two more children were dead, and a beautiful kid victor had reminded him how _cold_ he was up here although it was summer. How cold he always felt.

Ralda was sighing, next to him, almost low enough for the wind to carry the sound away, and he suddenly remembered that she’d never been sold. That shouldn’t have mattered, but it still did. 

“How old are you again?” she asked. “Thirty-two?”

He gave her a look that hopefully conveyed he thought she’d lost it, but she just gave him a long look back and eventually he rolled his eyes at her, giving in. “Thirty-three.”

“Okay,” she readily said. “Well. This is not a question that you ask yourself at thirty-three.”

“Thirty-three is old age at a district like Twelve.”

“Not for a victor who has money and medicine and food.” Again, she sighed, and how did she do that? She was such a frail thing and her hair was always stringy no matter what her stylist did, and the remake people rarely even tried to get her out of those bland knitted things from home, anymore, because she barely made it on screen in the first place. She made you listen, though. She made him listen. 

She was kinder to him than he deserved. 

“You have a lot of time to meet another Alsey, Haymitch.” Hearing Alsey’s name would have made him start if he wasn’t so drunk. There weren’t a lot of people who knew it anymore; he must have talked about her in a letter, or the alcohol had stolen the memory of how he’d talked about her. “You’re a wonderful man. You’d have great things to offer to a woman. Or a man,” she added, undeterred, when he snorted at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one? It’s not very smart to just assume that everybody is the same, or wants the same. You can’t know what will happen. Plenty of people are special and different. Why shouldn’t you meet somebody else one day?” 

_Because I’m a waste. Because I’m a drunk. Look at me._ It felt safe to be those things, most of the time. But some days, they reminded him of all the doors that had closed. Finnick Odair growing into a stunning picture of a man reminded him of those. Of that gut reaction when you looked at a man and suddenly that feeling wasn’t _forbidden_. He’d never get over that. 

He’d used to be quite handsome, and maybe he could have had somebody even like Odair back then. Being handsome, though… it hadn’t turned out all that it was cracked up to be. 

He tried to tell himself that Ralda didn’t understand what it was like in Twelve, because she lived in a city, she lived in a skyscraper; if she wanted to meet somebody new, she could go to some _bar,_ for fuck’s sake. An anonymous bar. The only anonymous thing in Twelve was the tributes rows in the graveyard. 

He didn’t say, _I asked you this because I noticed this morning that Finnick Odair is really hot. I get why they all want to touch him. I do, too. Not that he’d want me to. He’s just a kid. I know he’s just a kid._ It was an oddity, is all, a weird blip. 

His body wasn’t even working anymore, his mind was too messed up from the alcohol to even produce the right pictures that he could get off to. And that thought felt relieving most days; it felt safe, because sure, he was old, but Conny was old too and yet the Capitol were still paying for him, and better safe than sorry, as far as Haymitch was concerned. He’d pay with all the tabloid analyses of his waistline in the world. But that night, staring at the lights of the Capitol next to Ralda, who thought he was worth it, the night after he hadn’t been able to draw his eyes away from that beautiful boy, it felt hard to remember that fact.

* * *

He wakes up one morning waiting for his stomach to flip over, but it doesn’t, because he’s sober. He waits for Maysilee’s screams to mix with the song of birds wafting in through the window, remains of a dream to carry over into reality, but that doesn’t happen either. Instead, he grows aware of the weight resting in his crotch. 

Haymitch refuses to be a cliché by glancing under the sheet. He might not have expected erections to suddenly make a reappearance in his life, doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how one would feel. 

_Huh,_ he thinks, shifting his weight and, with a sort of detached curiosity, feeling it move against his belly. Didn’t use to feel quite that sluggish, pretty sure, but still this is definitely mostly recognizable. _How about that._

The erection doesn’t just go away on its own, like he half hoped. He gets up, grabbing some clothes and listening to noises of Noreen or Odair and hearing none, making off to the bathroom. His dick remains in its unexpected stiff state, dangling about, definitely somewhat less upright than he remembers but still very much doing its thing. It’s softened a bit once he glances at it in the mirror while brushing his teeth. He has a faint memory of some Capitol shrink with screaming green hair telling him that this might start happening, but frankly Haymitch had neither cared at the time, nor believed him, and also that was about the last conversation he had wanted to have with anybody, thank you very much. He lost enough dignity at White Feathers. All of it, in fact. 

He realizes that a part of him has been resolved to believe that it wasn’t just the alcohol; he’d wanted erections to be just gone; it had felt like a kind of closure, something that was done with. 

Now he’s glancing at it with a faint sense of disdain, not quite knowing what to do with it. 

He’s in the shower, first time of the day, flipping through the soap options and letting lavender and cinnamon, or something, pour down on him along the water, when he eventually thinks _oh fuck it all,_ and reaches down to take it in hand. 

It feels… weird. It feels strange and like it’s not really his dick, but somebody else’s, and somebody else’s hand on it, and like it isn’t something that could conceivably be happening to this body. It is, though, and the erection gets harder again when he strokes it, a motion that is apparently too ingrained to forget. Well. He used to do this rather desperately as a young adult. He can feel how pleasant the sensation is objectively, how it’s spreading from his dick a little bit into his belly. Standing under the spray, the hand motion makes his arm slide against his torso, too, and that’s another sensation that suddenly feels a bit out there, wetness, skin on skin, even if it’s his own. 

He knows well enough how it’s supposed to go, so he starts searching his brain for some images that would fit the… the mood. Beetee, obviously. Beetee always used to be a safe go-to option, nothing off-putting about the things they used to do with each other. Lots of enthusiastic consent always involved, plus Haymitch knows Beetee wouldn’t mind – would probably feel flattered, actually, even after all these years. The idea makes him chuckle, because Beetee is so stuffy these days. 

After a moment, Haymitch settles on a memory of how he fucked Beetee once, bent over a kitchen table, which Haymitch thought was a bit too kinky for his taste at the time honestly, though Beetee seemed to like it plenty. The sensations of it had felt good, however, the tightness around his cock, Beetee’s then fairly muscular back with that great dark skin tone. But it’s too long ago, the memory dusty, ultimately better off in the drawer that he took it from. 

Alsey is a no-go area, as is Catriona, as is very definitely Lyra, never mind his old pedophile buddies in the Capitol, so for a while, there isn’t much progress, his dick standing at attention expectantly but not doing much else, while Haymitch flips through images in his mind. It gets more abstract and anonymous, fantasy material more than memory, and he switches back from women to men, to images of flawless v-shapes and clean curves of biceps and the sheer perfection of muscular thighs meeting a firm, small ass and… yeah, this is better. This is suddenly good. 

It ain’t the greatest orgasm in his life, it’s too alienating an experience for that, and the hot spunk that the water suddenly has to wash off his fingers almost catches him by surprise, lacking fireworks, relief more than joy. Well, it takes practice, Haymitch guesses, or at least he would be guessing, if he wasn’t busy looking down at his hand and his softening dick with that _what the fuck_ in his head, and this is so fucking _weird._ And he could deal with this, he really could, he thinks, it would be surreal but doable, if it wasn’t for his realization that that’s not just any anonymous Capitol model or anything that he’s been picturing but it’s been Odair all along, the guy who’s walking in and out of his house every day now. Who’s Haymitch’s friend and unlike Beetee, _definitely_ wouldn’t appreciate becoming his wank material. 

_Fuck,_ he’s thinking, and _fuck_ and he leans his arms against the shower wall and puts his head on them as sort of a preemptive countermeasure so that he won’t start hitting it against the wall out of sheer pain about his life because _of course_ he’d picture fucking Odair, of _course_ he’s feeling just _that_ attracted to Finnick _because this is his life he’s talking about._ And this is exactly what he did not need in it.

* * *

_This is going to be hard,_ Haymitch thinks miserably, stirring soup at the kitchen counter as ordered, bracing himself internally when Finnick leans in to peek at the pot with that shocking inability of his to judge personal space. It’s like something got broken in the boy’s brain when he was still too young to know any better, so now it’s all conflated in his actions, flirting and teasing, giving signs he obviously doesn’t know he’s giving, making invitations that aren’t really any. It shouldn’t matter. Leaning in close enough to feel body heat isn’t a _yes, take me_ and never will be; biting your lower lip inches from Haymitch’s face isn’t an invitation. Haymitch knows this. He’s supposed to be the fucking adult in this friendship. Odair might have a couple of inches and a whole lot of upper body strength on Haymitch, doesn’t mean he isn’t fragile as shit, terrifyingly ill-equipped to face certain dangers. 

Haymitch shouldn’t be one of those dangers, but he still can’t help a desperate desire to lean in and touch. There’s a terrible, terrible need he has to touch, interspersed with just as much fear of doing so, so many different kinds of fear, and then there’s also just the _sight_ of Odair and what it does to his brain and _fuck._ He can _smell_ Finnick when he’s that close to him. He smells faintly of mint most district days. When the remake crew makes the choices for him, it’s always coconut and honey.

“Let me try,” Odair says and honestly expects Haymitch to hold out a spoon for him, completely innocent in how he’s waggling his eyebrows – just means he’s in a good mood, and relaxed, Haymitch knows. Haymitch is helping with the cooking and sleeping through the night and coming along to do shopping, and at the same time, something inside Odair has relaxed. 

Haymitch exercises self-control and does as he’s told. Finnick crooks his head, meditating upon the taste of the soup. “Needs more salt,” he eventually decides, and Haymitch snorts, relieved when Finnick moves away. 

“We’ve got no salt, Odair, it’s the end of the month.”

“Well that just figures.”

Odair is gone, leaving the spot where he’s been hovering painfully empty. 

Haymitch wants to grip the kitchen counter and groan. 

This isn’t just a physical attraction, he knows. This is something so much worse, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with Odair’s cues. It’s growing, too, and Haymitch doesn’t know how to stop it. He knows from painful experiences that it’s no use to even try.

There is, after all, one thing he should never forget about Ralda’s advice: It had come from the same woman who’d eventually bought herself some moonseed, the poison she’s used in her arena, and cooked herself a meal with it. 

And then, she’d eaten it all up.


	2. The one where Haymitch gets mail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s about a month after Odair did his Wintermas gig at the Capitol that the first letter arrives._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second outtake from the Haymitch POV fic of doom. The funny thing is, I didn't even have a spot to fit it. If I'd ended up finishing the story, I would have had to cut it with a heavy heart. It's set at around chapters 10/11 of Spin Control. 
> 
> Warnings for this one: Discussion of alcoholism and depression.

It’s about a month after Odair did his Wintermas gig at the Capitol that the first letter arrives. Haymitch finds it sailing to the ground one morning he opens the door; the Justice Building mailman must have stuck it to the frame. Not that Twelve has a real mailman. It’s got a merchie clerk working for the Peacekeepers at the train station, though, and whenever the victor – only person to get mail outside of the administration and business owners – gets deliveries, that poor bastard is charged with bringing it over to the Seam guy who’d be beneath him if he wasn’t such a successful killer. Haymitch has sometimes observed the guy from his window, one of the younger Turners who run the apothecary these days, but never talked to him. It’s not an interaction he needs in his life. 

He stares at the letter. It’s crumpled and the address is handwritten, and it doesn’t look like any letter he’s gotten in a long time, since Ralda died. It’s got the District Four stamp on it, and for a moment, he’s convinced that this was delivered to the wrong house, it’s actually for Odair, except it’s got _Haymitch Abernathy, Victors’ quarters_ on it. 

Ripping it open without bothering to shut the door, although it’s winter and it’s freezing, he looks at the signature first, mouths “Conny?” to himself because this just got weirder, then reads the actual letter. He’s rarely ever received any mail from Conny except if there was something practical that needed to be communicated, like the time they tried to get assembled a real nice set of presents when Chaff had gotten hitched. Even he can make out what a pain it must have been to write. Conny hates talking about himself. He hates talking, period. This is a long letter, and every sentence must have been a struggle, balancing personal dislikes and censorship requirements and districts know what else. It’s strangely empty, when it comes down to it, having no particular hard information in it. _“Hello Haymitch,”_ it starts and goes on to inform him that Four’s got a light winter this season, _“and who the fuck knows if that means you’d have a light one too.”_ And Calina has been bugging him to take on teaching a class that Conny really doesn’t want to teach, _“but I’m going to end up doing it anyway, who are we kidding here.”_ Conny’s got a biting sense of humor, but it only turns aggressive when he’s uneasy about something, and Haymitch can see how he was spitting his shit all over the page out of sheer discomfort about the exercise. It’s got no declaration of intent in it; Conny never put an explanation of where the fuck this is coming from, and Haymitch itches to just stuff it back in the mail with a big looping, _“Are you dying?”_ scribbled all over it with a black Capitol sharpie. 

Then he decides that Connie would have found a way to say if there was anything like that, even if it was just a, “I’m dealing, fuck you,” at the end. There’s nothing like that either. It’s a mystery.

Haymitch puts the letter on the counter in his hallway, propped against the wall, the now-clean hallway kept pristine by Noreen, half expecting she will angrily demand he clean up his shit after himself the moment she sees. 

That doesn’t happen, though probably not on account of any restraint on Noreen’s part; the longer she works here, and the more comfortable they get about the idea of being in the same room occasionally, the more Haymitch is learning that the entire concept of restraint would be news to that girl. 

The letter stays propped up on the counter, where Haymitch can see it every time he leaves the house or returns from somewhere. He doesn’t know what to do with it, and he feels like he’s circling around it the way a tribute would a food stash that they aren’t sure could be a trap. He doesn’t know what to write back. Telling Conny about his life would feel weird, and like he isn’t saying the things that need to be said. Telling him he’s sleeping on his own and going to the bakery sometimes is out of question for how that would sound, and the only honest letter he could picture that would make it through the censorship office is the one that would have, _“I need a drink”_ written on it, again and again, until it reaches the end of the page.


	3. The one with the kiss in the lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I think we should go swimming today.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think there's no other scene or fic I've been asked to write more often than this one, so I hope it'll live up to people's expectations. It's the last Haymitch POV snippet I have on offer, too. 
> 
> Warnings for this one: alcoholism, clinical depression, self-hatred, body image issues aplenty, and... let's call it imaginary consent issues. There are some times when Haymitch describes his own body in a very negative way that aren't pretty.

“I think we should go swimming today,” Finnick announces between two bites of bread roll one morning in April, so Haymitch replies, “Is this where you go crazy again?” because sure there’s been some spring warmth but the _water_ ’s gonna be chilly as fuck and it’s not like they have a doctor here in Twelve who can save their lives after pneumonia strikes. Finnick is determined, though, and it’s such a relief to see him acting normal and not like after Wintermas anymore that Haymitch would have said yes even if he hadn’t promised him months ago. Because Haymitch has reconciled himself with the fact that he is desperately, painfully in love. It sucks pretty bad. 

Finnick’s jokes about skinny dipping aside, he’s also not so hot about dropping his pants and prancing around almost naked where Finnick of all people can see. Finnick is sixteen years younger than him – he was born the year Haymitch won his Games, for fuck’s sake – and an admirer of any kind is the very last thing he needs in his life, too. The idea that Finnick, who might not even be interested in guys to begin with, could notice him in that sexual way is so ridiculous that Haymitch doesn’t even have to consider it; there’s something faintly threatening about that possibility that he doesn’t want to dwell on, anyway. However, that doesn’t mean he wants this man looking at him and forming opinions. Haymitch’s got enough of a beer belly that he needs to move it aside if he wants to look at his own dick. He’s disproportional, and he’s hairy, and if you’ve got a thing for dark curly hair and strong noses for whatever reason, the entire Seam is full of people who can supply those features but on a prettier face. He’s the direct opposite of the Capitol beauty ideal. That, combined with his age, is a _good thing._ It makes him safe. But he still doesn’t _want_ to think about Finnick looking at him and thinking, _nah_ , he just _doesn’t._

The hike through the forest passes with a faint sense of dread on Haymitch’s part interspersed with the kind of misery that comes from knowing he could listen to Finnick prattling on about random things for days, because it makes something in his chest come loose. He was scared for Odair after Wintermas. Odair’s façade of cheer is always brittle, there’s always something else lurking right underneath the surface of his aplomb and his jokes that says he could start crying instead of laughing, and falling apart any minute; he regularly has those moments when he just shuts down for a minute, paling, struggling with something or other he can’t bear. He’s just so damn _young_ and so damn _frail_ and there’s nothing Haymitch can _do._ It’s rare to see him so happy. 

Those are _three distinct contradicting feelings_ he’s having, all at once, and how do people do this on a daily basis? These days, Haymitch can almost reconcile himself with the idea that he’s gonna make it through another day without any booze, but how do people _handle_ this? He’s just confused all the time. He gets overwhelmed by the simplest things. He strangely feels like crying sometimes, though thank all the districts, he’s managing to keep that one under wraps. 

They reach the lake and he tells Odair to get it out of his system. Next thing he knows, Odair’s shaking off his clothes like it’s an art form. _Oh the fuck’s fuck,_ Haymitch is thinking and groaning to himself and very carefully keeping his eyes in the appropriate places with a self-discipline he’d thought he’d lost from lack of practice. 

He’s strangely got his ma’s voice ringing in his ear these days about how to be proper and behave himself when he visits Alsey. 

Finnick’s off into the lake, and Haymitch’s eyes follow the tense line of muscle between his shoulder blades betraying that he’s hit by the cold. In spirit, he’s fragile, but his body is a picture of masculinity. _Fuck._ Finnick’s waist’s so slender that Haymitch can see the hip bones protruding, and the skin along the waistline of his trunks seems so soft that it’s a good thing he’s moving away from Haymitch and vanishing into the water because Haymitch’s suddenly got a desperate need to get closer. 

Here’s the advantage to battling a heart attack in the freezing cold during swimming lessons: His dick chortles a short _no_ , then goes firmly into hibernation. Not that Haymitch’s young enough to really have that problem of inappropriate erections, though the whole dick action is still new enough that it warrants the occasional conscious check. He still can’t believe he’s doing this, basically naked, wading through a lake, where one could _drown_. He remembers how he was here the one time, with Janey Hadlow and Huck Meave and Reed Oakenreed from the Seam Oakenreeds, that summer when they were fourteen and ended up friends for two months until school restarted. That was a good summer. None of them had known how to swim. None of them had gone on to be Reaped, miraculously, though Janey had lost a son in the Games eventually, and Reed had died in the mines his first year out of school. 

Having returned to play teacher, Finnick keeps glancing at him, and Haymitch has to stop himself from looking at Finnick. He’s too naked and that man is too _close_ to him. And then he’s completely out of his element here in the water where he doesn’t know how to make it out alive if he loses his footing. Everything feels loose, and like it’s floating away from him. He has no choice but to trust Finnick that he knows what he’s doing. It feels strangely dissociative, but not in a bad way. In a way where the unease and the confusion float away a little bit, too, there but not there, as if the cold water’s made those numb as well. 

Then he’s actually floating, on his back, drifting on the surface, and Finnick’s… _Odair’s_ hand is on the small of his back underwater, not letting go. It should make everything tingle and have him start, but it doesn’t. Odair is so close they’re almost touching, lowly telling him how to breathe, and this is good. Haymitch could have stayed like that with that hand on him and that body heat close by. It’s selfish, but it’s good. 

Until he loses his balance, of course, splashing back into the water, and that’s it with the swimming. He waves his hand at the center of the lake, making Odair do more of his thing. When the other man is off, cutting through the water like something ridiculously dangerous and beautiful and skilled, he carefully wades over to a big rock in the lake, trying to figure out what to do with his arms while he does. Just like he remembers, he finds a ledge on it underwater that he can use to sit. He sat on it that summer day one time, wondering if that’s how President Snow feels on those towering chairs of his. He feels disconcerted and unbalanced and still doesn’t want to leave the lake just yet, and that’s way too many feelings at once all over again.

In the distance, Finnick occasionally turns to look in his direction, but otherwise does his thing, and Haymitch thinks he can live like this. He can handle Odair as close to him as they were before, he’s not a baby, but what’s good is how he’s watching Odair, and Odair thinks to occasionally look, and really that’s what friendship’s all about. He’s got this young man in his life. He’s blessed. 

Covering the lap back to him with what might as well have been a single powerful stroke, Finnick breaches the surfaces a few yards away, close enough to smirk at Haymitch. 

“You’re bizarre, you know that?” Haymitch calls out to him, what feels like a similar expression appearing on his own face. “Aberration of a victor of some sort.”

“What’s wrong with enjoying ourselves for a change?” Finnick shoots back, spreading his arms. 

“The complete lack of booze while we do so, for example,” Haymitch counters, and Finnick is in motion again, covering the last of the distance and emerging again directly in front of Haymitch, just enough distance to retain his freedom of motion with that shocking lack of sense for personal space again. It makes Haymitch’s breath hitch, a part of his brain observing carefully and judging that Finnick probably hasn’t seen. 

“You don’t really mean that,” Finnick says in a normal voice, not having to shout anymore. 

Haymitch can’t help his eyes straying down the curve of his neck, over his shoulders, double as strong as Haymitch’s easily, because that’s all muscle. 

“Yeah, I don’t,” he admits, because he doesn’t. 

He’s holding onto his ledge with both hands underwater, the strange physics of swimming making him light enough not quite to float away, but to possibly slide off his seat. 

Finnick is so shockingly close that they really would touch, if Haymitch let go, and it’s like his whole body is soaking in the nearness, that contact substitute; all the parts of his body facing Finnick are tingling. 

His eyes wander upwards again to meet Finnick’s, _fuck_ , those eyes that used to keep him awake even four years ago when this man was mostly a kid and he’d felt like he suddenly understood what that crap Capitol poetry meant about drowning in a sight. That had been before he knew anything about who Finnick really was. This… this is worse. 

He barely has an opportunity to notice that he’s been so fucking obvious that even Finnick has seen because their eyes have only just locked when Finnick – fuck – has closed the distance between them, motion so smooth that water barely splatters, somehow enclosing him with his hands and feet holding onto the rock around him, hovering, chest heaving and falling when he looks at Haymitch, and he’s too _close._ Haymitch can’t think.

“Now what would this be about, Odair?” he hears himself say, because _fuck_ , he has to give that kid an _out_ although all of him is screaming to keep towards where this is going. He’s a terrible person. Finnick says, stuttering, as if his mind is in pieces, “I want… I don’t…” and, “Can I…” and Haymitch says, “Shit” because what other reply is there, and Finnick’s lips are on his. _Fuck,_ Finnick’s lips are on his and this is _too much_ and all of Haymitch just goes slack and his mouth opens when that tongue licks along his lips just so, just about the sweetest thing that he has ever tasted. They aren’t even touching except for their lips, but it doesn’t matter, because all sensation of the cold water around has been replaced by something else, something so much better, shuddering all through Haymitch’s bones and skin. He just needs _more._ He couldn’t bear more. He still needs more. 

He only notices that he’s reached out when he feels Finnick’s thigh under his palm, squeezing it on that brainless quest to amplify, and Finnick startles away immediately, breathing hard. Haymitch’s eyes are doing their job again and something bad tightens in his belly when he catches the tail end of panic passing Finnick’s face. 

“Sorry,” he breathes, retracting his hand and gripping the ledge like before because that position has worked before and all his brain can focus on is the best way to make this last. Except now his mind is working again, and never mind kissing again is the best thing he’s ever done, common sense creeps back in. He has to be the adult here. Finnick very clearly isn’t thinking straight. This has to stop before it goes anywhere it really shouldn’t go. 

“Stop,” he manages between kisses, and when Finnick doesn’t react right away, tries to turn away tensely, saying, “Fuck, Odair.” 

They freeze at the same time. Finnick’s eyes snap at his face, all present and aware with an immediacy that you could only expect from a victor and Career, and Haymitch feels so vulnerable right now for some reason that that realization makes him shudder. Finnick reacts quickly and lets go of the rock, though, floating away from Haymitch on his back, eyes on Haymitch and full of concern. 

_Fuck,_ Haymitch thinks, and, _fuck._ He’s fucked it up. He has no idea what’s happened just now. He knows, though, that Finnick doesn’t really feel attracted to him, but he also knows that the Capitol has fucked him up. Everybody in Central knows that Finnick deals with the rape slightly differently from the other popular whores, who’ve almost all been Careers and won at eighteen, he’s gotten damaged on a different level. Some people are disquieted by that; they find it creepy, the way he does and doesn’t seem to shake it off – like it’s almost a natural part of him by now. None of them know anything about psychology, but all of them know Odair’s brain is off a little differently from most of the others, because it’s happening to him differently than to the others, and Haymitch has _known_ that Finnick can’t really differentiate the signals he gives day in and out. He has different boundaries in his head. Of course, he’d process sex things differently; of course, Haymitch must have been giving him cues and this is how you react to those in the world of Odair. 

He hates himself, suddenly, a lot. He hates the fact that he fucked this up. Finnick is his friend. Haymitch doesn’t doubt that he can look out for himself, but that doesn’t mean Haymitch shouldn’t have been more disciplined and kept his perversions to himself. Odair will come to his senses, and he’ll ask himself whatever the fuck just happened. 

“I need to get out of here,” Haymitch mutters, needing to have firm ground under his feet again and return to the territory where he’s safe, where he can defend himself instead of thinking how with a Games force field around him, all this water would make him dead. He needs to not be freezing. He needs to not feel like how if there were cameras present, everybody would be laughing at him, watching him jiggle.

They’re back at shore a minute later, and he can feel Finnick’s attention on him all the way through, faltered and puzzled, and openly concerned and scared. And he can’t stand that concern. He’s too concerned himself. He needs to be back in his house, where everything’s the way it always is. 

Haymitch doesn’t cry, no matter what, he hasn’t cried since his last couple of lonely little breakdowns the year Lyra left, when news of his dad’s death had reached him from the Seam, too. They hadn’t been on speaking terms for years at that point, but he suddenly didn’t know how to live all on his own. Faintly, he now wonders if this, right now, would be when other people cry. He just feels hollow, because for a minute his brain shut off and he had everything, and it had been all the things he’d imagined that kind of thing to be but better. 

A metal taste has been flooding his mouth and transformed into the sharpness of liquor, all over his tongue, reminding him of how much preferable it would be to drown in that instead of the lake.


	4. Assorted drabbles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyme is in trouble, Gale has a plan, and Finnick buys a book about cars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of prompt ficlets I wrote for the 'verse over time. I posted almost all of these on Tumblr and LJ at one point, but I figure not everybody might have seen them. 
> 
> No special warnings apply, for a change. I'm not sure how that happened.

**the one with Mags' take on it all**   
_~ chapter 6_

Most of the inhabitants of Victors’ Rock thought that Snow had forced Finnick to move to District 12. They weren’t clear on why the President had gone to the trouble of making it appear as if it had been Finnick’s own idea, a little uncomfortable about how Finnick always played his part so shockingly well, but understanding how it went, nonetheless. The Odair house was now empty; his family had left, the highest cottage on the cliff now a ghost. It would remain empty, of course, new victors would be asked to pick another house, for in some cases in the history of the Games, punishments had ended and those forced to leave had returned. 

Mags sighed when she checked her mailbox, sorting through advertisements from Capitol marketers and the escort’s monthly media report, but no news yet again from District 12. It had been a month, no mail at all from Finnick since. She knew he was still alone; Haymitch would be released from his hospital a week from now, the Capitol news had reported this morning.

_Give him time to wrap that head of his around what it all means,_ she’d advised Finnick’s father when she met him in town. When he approached her for answers, he had undoubtedly been fueled by that misguided hope that some of them had, that old Mags always knew what to do. That was nonsense, of course, but Mags thought it calmed them to think her wise and knowledgeable. Undoubtedly, Mr. Odair had thought she meant, _what Snow has made him do_. But Mags had been there that night of that television show; she knew what had really gone down. And even without that, Mags was a hard one to fool. 

She couldn’t say that she approved, not when Finnick’s choice had so obviously been driven by pain, and Mags didn’t think that was a good reason to do anything at all. But she thought that Finnick had to remember how to live with himself before he could remember how to live with anybody else. It had taken her over two decades to achieve it herself. So she knew a month was too short a time to start expecting a letter that told her he had. But she still checked her mail every day.

* * *

**the one where District Two does badly at the Games, and Lyme pays the price**   
_~ chapter 6_

Lyme was standing on the balcony at the top floor of Games Command, holding on to the railing so hard that the veins were showing on her steely biceps. 

She didn’t turn when Brutus stepped up to her, but then again, a victor with upper body strength like Lyme’s learned fast not to startle at that kind of movement. Though, a victor with weight like Brutus’ learned not to make any unnecessary sounds long before he actually obtained the right to call himself one. 

Not that the victor title wasn’t the biggest mockery of all, Lyme thought with an inward snort. 

Any victor of Panem learned to think these things but not ever say them aloud. 

“If you’ve come to tell me that I shouldn’t have expected any better from the higher-ups, you can go and shove that suggestion up your sorry ass,” she announced without turning her eyes away from the ground underneath. 

“Nah, didn’t,” Brutus replied. He stepped closer, having a cautious look down. But the center court was deserted this time of day, nobody playing with the mock-ups and practice targets, set up for recreation rather than training. And that was a mockery, too, because you could hardly call something _playing_ if it involved learning to kill. “I figured you’d be smart enough to know that all by yourself.”

Lyme grimaced. 

“She _panicked_ , Brutus,” she said, trying for a shrug and failing when her arms were too tense to obey the command. “They can give me shit for it all they want. I know I was supposed to stop it, although Capitol knows they couldn’t explain to me how exactly I should have done that. Yeah, she was a Career, she should have known what the fuck she was getting into but guess what? Apparently, she didn’t. And I’m supposed to, what, disown her in my memory or something? We can train them all we want, we can give them kill tests, in the end, she got there and guess what, the other tributes were just little kids and guess what, the Capitol didn’t actually give a fuck if she…”

“Lyme,” Brutus said in a warning tone, surprisingly quiet, all without that rumble in his voice and all the more threatening for it, and she shut up. 

Taking a deep breath, Lyme stared at the playground and at the barracks behind it, miles of training grounds for their army of child killers. 

It was a week after the 72nd Hunger Games, won by a boy from District Ten because he’d been smart enough to find shelter, waiting out that girl from Two that couldn’t hope to last longer than him – not only because she’d been the joke of that Games to the audience, but because a Two tribute just didn’t get to survive if they just screamed and screamed and screamed instead of grabbing a sword. 

The only reason district marketing wasn’t completely fucked had been because Finnick Odair had chosen to wag his pretty ass in special ways this year, distracting attention from them. 

Apollinara Bear had joined volunteer training at age ten, plucked right out of the orphanage. She hadn’t known anything but preparation for the Games in all her life; there hadn’t been any other future she’d have pictured for herself. She’d been tall and athletic and wicked with a katana. Even though some had criticized her for her tendency to hyper-focus during fights, Lyme had singled her out for her sharp marketing instincts and how everybody seemed to freeze in defense when she smiled. There were worse traits in a volunteer, Lyme had thought, than a one-track mind. 

The straightforward kids weren’t so likely to wake up screaming from terror after they won, after they realized what it was they had really done.

Lyme stiffened her jaw. 

“I’ve got trainees in the running for the next three Games,” she said. “Each had a chance to be picked as volunteer. They’re not gonna let me take any of them to the Games now, not if another mentor doesn’t step up. Not after what happened this year.”

Brutus exclaimed a faint contemplative humming sound. 

“They put me on the committee,” he remarked, blinking into the sun as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Just got the summons.” 

She gave him a disbelieving look. 

“There’s gonna be a fucking _committee_?”

He shrugged. “Gotta find out where selection went wrong. She shouldn’t have made any cut.”

“I can tell you what went wrong. You can write that up in your report. You gonna write, _We thought she was smart but then it turned out she was dumb. She thought she knew what she’d signed up for, but turned she didn’t._ That’s a bunch of crap, but you and I still know that that’s what that committee’s gonna find.”

Brutus raised his eyebrows at her. “Any recommended changes to the training schedule, too, since you’re doing my work for me now?”

“Give them more kill tests,” she promptly answered, bitterly adding, too quietly for any bugs to pick it up out of sheer habit, “Since it isn’t enough producing two killers each year, we very clearly need whole classes of kids who can’t live with themselves.” And louder, “Give them a better sense of what it’s like. How’s that sound?”

“Like you’re projecting,” Brutus said. 

Lyme snorted at him. 

They’d made her a killer, too. She had the arms of a smith, and she was a menace with her club, but all she did nowadays was create new little dolls for the Capitol to destroy. Because the crux of that was, the Capitol didn’t actually want killers.

_You want to make sure that none of your volunteers ever panic again, stop sending them into a fucking death match._ That was what that damn report should say. 

Those hadn’t been faceless tributes who’d have died if Apollinara had lived; they had been children, and at least eighteen out of those twenty-four hadn’t wanted to be there. The Capitol hadn’t cared who of them lived, just how they died, and none of the things Apollinara had been told all her life by her teachers had been true. 

Before that moment when she should have picked up that sword but instead had run away, nobody had ever even thought to call that girl dumb.

Lyme resolved that she wouldn’t start doing so now. 

She thought, Apollinara had been just a little too smart.

Obviously, that was another thing a victor didn’t say aloud.

* * *

**the one where District Two is still working on it**   
_~ chapter 6_

“It could have been worse,” Emilia Croaker stated rather calmly, blinking at the diagrams and figures projected onto the screen on the wall. Croaker wasn’t a victor, she was a marketing consultant, but nobody in Games Command had ever been as stupid as to think they could make do without those. “For that, we have District Twelve to thank. A whole 25% of media attention was focused on Finnick Odair, additional screen time was tied by Haymitch Abernathy’s disease. This left considerably less screen time for District Two. Approximately half of the marketing attention left was fueled into One male, the favorite this year. The rest was on us. You can see here the corresponding click rates analysis of the tribute pages on the Networks.” 

“I don’t care if it could have been worse,” Pythia Lambwick stated, who had won the 24th Games and then made Games Command, having held the position of Chief for over twenty years. She was old enough to have been allowed to keep the scar that ran all across her wrinkled face, left eye to right cheek; it didn’t exactly make her look happier now. “This was _our_ mistake, and I will hold _us_ responsible for it. We can hardly base our reputation marketing on the hope that Odair will pull a convenient stunt every time we fuck up.”

“And yet we plan on pointing fingers at Twelve the next time it happens,” Brutus sing-songed into his water glass, low enough for only Lyme to here. 

Lyme resisted an urge to grimace at him. Two was usually too much of a power house to have to worry about media spin control. Producing another victor every few years, getting Brutus or ‘Baria on camera to nudge the reporters in the right directions, usually was enough. They didn’t need to leak the other districts’ dirty laundry to the press to divert any negative attention from Two. None of the victors liked doing that; many of them were friends with victors from the other districts, and none of them would look forward to the atmosphere in Mentor Central if ever it was revealed that that was how Two played the Games. But this was the ninth marketing meeting she had attended since the Capitol had laughed at their panicking tribute, and damage control wasn’t over just yet. Lyme didn’t have to like it. Give it two or three years to try and repair their reputation with strong tributes winning a Games fair and square. If that failed, they had a lot of other means. Except Lyme had fucked up, and nobody would listen to her again any time soon.

Taking in Croaker’s analysis with only half her attention, Lyme glanced down the briefing table with an uncomfortable feeling in her guts. Lyra Ingram was seated at the far end – 37th Games, substitute mentor for Twelve for seven years. An aging woman now, her short graying hair was still cut short enough to not get in the way of a fight, and her face was hard like a statue’s, impossible to read. She had mentored a tribute to victory only once, and it hadn’t been a tribute from Two. Lyra hadn’t been banished to Twelve for fun; she’d never made her district proud, and people liked to pretend that she didn’t exist. Lyme hadn’t once seen her at a meeting; she’d never been ordered to attend one in her time.

But Two had fucked up, and if it fucked up again, Command wouldn’t hesitate to exploit another district if it meant it drew attention away from Two. It was a good contingency plan, even Lyme had to admit. And if there was anything that could be used against Twelve, that woman would know. 

Nothing about the Hunger Games was ever fair. 

Lyme tried telling herself that.

* * *

**the one where spring arrives in District Twelve**   
_~ chapters 10 - 11_

When spring thaw came around, Finnick seemed to hate it even more than he hated the snow. His feet got soaked when he stepped into puddles he just didn’t expect to be there, and Haymitch surprised himself by thinking he had no fucking clue how that man had ever survived a Games, while laughing at him. 

He said as much when he grabbed Finnick’s arm on their way back from town, bodily hauling him out of the way of another hole in the badly maintained street. Maybe a fancy district such as Four didn’t have those, either. 

“Funny,” Finnick said, rolling his eyes. “My arena had a storm, I’ll have you know.”

“Get out of those shoes and get dry,” Haymitch said. He didn’t think anybody would be as stupid as to not do that first thing, excepting their friendly neighbors from the Capitol, but Finnick was opening Haymitch’s eyes to entirely new levels of ignorance, so it paid to be safe. It had taken Finnick long enough to get out of his funk this winter, he didn’t need him to catch a cold on top of that. 

It should have gotten Haymitch’s mind reeling, thinking of arenas such as the one last year, the one he’d only gotten glimpses of when they let him watch the Games in the hospital. It should have made him obsess just a little with how to survive that Games, about how that arena probably wouldn’t have been for him, or worse yet, about Finnick in those Games. Fucking game of chance.

But it didn’t. All Haymitch thought was that he might have to accompany Finnick home and bully him into a shower or something, because obviously the kid had no idea how to take care of himself. Also, telling him that could end up pretty funny. 

Haymitch had no complaints about spring thaw this year.

* * *

**the one with the gift**   
_~ mid-story_

Finnick liked novels, stories from before the Dark Days, stories about people other than him, places other than Panem. Haymitch liked non-fiction, he liked facts. He liked books that taught him something, anything, books that didn’t waste his time with fancy words. Victory had gained him access to amounts of knowledge that he’d never had a chance to gather in school. 

The book was on cars, though Twelve didn’t have cars, especially not the old-fashioned kind with rubber wheels depicted on the faded cover, and it was overpriced. Finnick knew it, and Salla, the book lady knew it, too. He bought it anyway. 

Eyes were on him, everywhere around. People were talking, voices rushing through the Hob - _enjoying himself so quickly again after the Games, guess he got bored without a girl to fuck, the other one at least would look like he belongs._

Salla took his money, with a short nod and eyes that noticed too much. Finnick returned the nod, pocketing the book, not attempting a smile. It would be wasted here. He’d keep it for when he got home.

* * *

**the one where Gale has things to think about**   
_written as a teaser for chapter 17_

“I don’t like it,” Kat said, cleaning her knives. “He doesn’t have to care if his tributes survive. It’s not like they’re from his district! And he sleeps around all the time. Everybody knows.” 

“Yes,” Gale replied. “But I think he’s got a plan.”

“A plan to get home maybe,” Kat huffed. “After he’s seen what Twelve is really like.”

Gale suppressed a grimace, sitting down on the trunk next to Kat and holding out a clean cloth for her to exchange for the oiled one she had used to tend to her knives. It was just far away enough from the fence that the patrols wouldn’t see. No reason to venture further out just for maintenance work. 

He still didn’t know if it had been a good idea to introduce Kat to Odair, not even after it had become clear that his hunch had worked out – man with muscle like that needed protein more than he needed to suck up to Cray. 

Though truth was, he hadn’t seen Odair sucking up to anybody yet, and that gave him pause. 

Kat put down the knife with a sigh, throwing him an almost apologetic grimace. “I don’t get him,” she said. “I don’t think I want to.”

“I know,” Gale said, kicking at a rock with the tip of his shoe. 

Gale didn’t get Finnick Odair either, Odair who was seen every day working out as if he had another Games to prepare. Odair who seemed like an okay person if Gale talked to him, who didn’t bat an eyelash at Gale’s prices although they both knew Gale had him pay extra – it had paid for Posy’s new dress. Odair who’d left for the Capitol this Wintermas and proceeded to fuck his way across the mandatory television broadcasts – and what disgusted Gale about _that_ most was that he didn’t even seem to pick them for looks, just for the screen time opportunity. 

Gale thought Odair had sort of tried to let him know that all wasn’t what it seemed in the Capitol, but even though he believed him that still didn’t mean he liked how the man conducted his personal affairs and acted like that had shit to do with anything. 

“Maybe we don’t have to like him to trust that he’s on our side in the Games,” he eventually said, not sure where he was even going with that. 

“Oh come on,” Kat said, reaching for another knife. 

The thing was, Kat was pretty similar to Gale, but they were different in a lot of ways, too. Gale knew that Kat wasn’t angry the same way he was, like when he woke up in the morning and he thought about the Capitol and what it all meant and he just wanted to _shake,_ that was how furious he got. Kat didn’t do that, she’d rather keep her head down and be safe, she and Prim. She didn’t want to act.

But sometimes, Gale thought that Odair did, that he knew exactly how Gale felt. 

There was a sort of vague plan taking shape in his head when he thought about all that… Gale was nothing if not practical. He forever wondered how a thing could help _him._

“What?” Kat said, glancing at his face as though she already knew that she wouldn’t like the answer one bit. 

“Nothing,” Gale said, shrugging it off. 

He had a feeling that it would be better not to tell; so she wouldn’t be hurt, if it went wrong.

* * *

**the one where Haymitch wakes up alone**   
_~ last couple of chapters_

Haymitch wakes up shaking, fisting the sheet and breathing harshly. It’s singing birds and shiny colors and too-red blood spilling out of the mouth of that bulky kid from One, and that metallic taste filling his own. It takes a moment until it all slowly starts mixing with the smell of sleep and warmth and Finnick’s sheets, those herbs that Fallon uses to scent his laundry. 

He’s alone. Sunshine is unraveling brightly all across the bed, and those are real district birds singing outside, Twelve robins instead of freak flamingos. A pipe is rumbling inside the wall; the shower is running, which means Finnick’s already back from his morning run. It’s fairly late.

Grimacing, Haymitch rolls onto his back and plops onto the pillow, but that just means he finds himself faced with that creepy golden trident on the wall. That’s one thing about Finnick he hasn’t quite figured out, that murder weapon across his bed, fastened with a clever little set of hooks and knots that shows it off in the very best light while leaving the blades unmarred. At some point in his life, a somewhat younger Finnick must have put a lot of thought into how to best put it on display, back in Four, changing it around until he was satisfied. That’s one of the things about Finnick: He throws himself into everything that’s bad for him in this suicidal, complete kind of way. _Disturbing_ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

But Finnick isn’t the one who dreams about the arena almost every night. Haymitch distastefully stares down the trident, waiting for the chirps of the district birds and the warmth of early summer to chase the other stuff away completely, for that taste in his mouth to vanish. At least, he’s got no issues remembering the 65th Games, apart from how it’s a Games. 

The shower’s been turned off. It’s a moment until the door opens and Finnick quietly sneaks in expecting him asleep. His hair is wet, drops glistering on his shoulders. His mouth twitches when notices Haymitch’s eyes taking him in, which hopefully means he didn’t stare at the way his sweatpants hang low enough to show his hipbones. He’s ridiculously attractive, in that fresh and fragile and masculine way. 

Finnick slips under the sheets next to Haymitch. A wave of some kind of sharp minty soap and cleanness hits Haymitch, pushing away the sweet arena scents further, like an insistent little wave. “Hey,” Finnick says and Haymitch replies with an agreeable sleepy sound. They’re kissing, and Finnick’s arm is falling around his waist, stroking along his thigh and hip and belly in that weird, still unexpected, appreciative way. The sound Finnick makes against his lips is appreciative too, like he’s learning to use it to communicate. It all reminds Haymitch of how there’s a hell of a lot he doesn’t quite get about Finnick’s motivations overall. Maybe he’s just got a bizarro sense of taste. 

The arena fades further, and the thing is, there’s Finnick Odair in his arm, who magazines have called the sexiest man alive three years in a row. And the thing is, there used to be other mornings, when his mouth never had a chance of tasting like metal, because it was chased away by that intense sensory memory of liquor instead that seemed to hang in the air everywhere. And that didn’t happen today. He belatedly grows aware that he even slept through all of the night undisturbed.

So Haymitch is willing to drop that concern about what the fuck is wrong with Finnick’s choice in partners and focus on the moment, right now, allowing his vision to white out in that way that’s good, and probably even won’t get them killed.


	5. Lyra Ingram Returns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Then very surprisingly, she said in a tone that conveyed how little she liked doing so, “I hope you know that it was never my intention to cause you any pain.”_
> 
> _“And yet,” Haymitch easily replied._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last one! (For now! There might be more missing scenes in the future) 
> 
> So if you ever wondered why the topic of Lyra Ingram suddenly vanished from the story, although she had gotten such a broad exposition, that's because I had to cut the appearance she had scheduled during the 74th Hunger Games. It was supposed to be a whole big thing. Alas, if you don't need a part of your story, it needs to go away. At that point I'd already written a draft of her first scene, and this is it. It's set during the first day at the Capitol; I replaced it with the scene where Finnick talks to Calina about Mags.

They caught up with Calina and Johanna, said hi to Bunita and Dune and tried their hardest not to be obvious about ignoring Chaff, seated at the bar alongside Caramel and Lee Sun. They had just been exchanging pleasantries with Beetee, who Finnick couldn’t help but notice changed the subject very suavely when Finnick inquired about his tribute. Finnick doubted they had a runner-up, but maybe Three wasn’t ruling out a chance to play the Games if all went well this year. With Beetee as mentor, that could as well mean another Wiress. 

They both looked up when another gaggle of victors entered the room. Haymitch paused in the middle of an argument about Three engineering and breathed out a faint, “Now how about that.” 

“Who is that?” Finnick asked him, stepping closer. Those were the usual District Two victors he would have expected to come to the Capitol this year, either as mentor or because they were in demand. There was Brutus – mentoring as always – followed by Enobaria, Rubin who'd won the year after her, and their most recent victor, Fulvius. At first glance, Finnick had taken the tall woman entering last as Lyme, since he was still so used to Lyme, and Lyme had a similar silhouette. It took him a moment to realize he’d never seen that woman before, who was much older. She wore the same violet stripes on her collar as Brutus, which was Two’s way of marking their mentors of a given Games. Maybe in her fifties, gray hair short-cropped in a military style, she moved as if in uniform. Her face appeared distant, restrained, as if she didn’t want to be anywhere less. Of course, that was true for everybody in the room, but it didn’t usually show in Two. 

“That,” Haymitch replied in distraction, “is this Games taking a turn for the shitty.”

Beetee’s eyes were swiftly moving from Haymitch to the stranger, then back to Haymitch again with growing alarm. 

“I believe the expression is, ‘I just remembered I have a thing’,” he remarked, then cleared his voice and added quietly, “You know where to find me.” Then, he was gone. 

Lyra Ingram. It came to Finnick in a flash. Of _course_ Lyra Ingram, who’d been sent to mentor for Twelve as punishment, once upon a time, then was sent back home to be punished again. 

The moment her eyes fell on Haymitch, she resolved from the group and stepped up to them, as if pulled there against her will. 

Finnick immediately feared that this wouldn’t be pleasant. Yes, Haymitch had once been in love with that woman. _“Lyra helped,”_ he had once said. _“Just having her there.”_ That had been then. _“Be with me instead of him,”_ Haymitch had said to her and she’d still rather slept with the other, less tainted boy, and she’d been sent away. Haymitch had lost a lot of people along the way, but Lyra had been the only one of them who’d left because of a decision she’d made. She could as well have chosen him; she just hadn't wanted to. 

During the last Games, Haymitch and Finnick had kept their relationship very private, but now, Finnick had come to stand closely enough to Haymitch to almost touch shoulders. Haymitch wasn’t moving away, either. 

He seemed very sober in a very sharp, very vigilant way. 

“Well.” He spoke up before Ingram could, the moment when she reached them. A full head taller than Haymitch, she was almost able to look Finnick in the eye. “Look what the cat dragged in.” 

_More proof that Two has changed its strategy, if they brought that woman in to replace Lyme,_ the calculating part of Finnick couldn’t help but think.

“Haymitch,” Lyra said, chin raised in an almost defensive way. “It’s been a long time.”

“It’d be twenty years this Games,” Haymitch replied almost pleasantly, which would have been alarming to anybody who knew him well. Twenty years since Lyra returned to the Capitol to mentor for the last time – for Two, this time, seeing her daughter off to die in the bloodbath. Twenty years since Haymitch hurt so much that he fell into bed with Catriona Wink, then hurt even more because he’d done it wrong. He'd been lonely, terrified, and desperate. 

“Yes.” People like Lyra made decisions to not ever care again, then stuck to them with their all. “News of the Twelve strategy changes have been reaching us. I was pleased to hear about your new sobriety. It suits you well.” 

It probably would have helped if she hadn’t sounded like she was sitting in a jury giving away points for performance. Lyra’s face was like stone, and there were exactly four people in the world whose remarks about his alcoholism Haymitch would have tolerated – excluding Chaff, including Johanna. Lyra Ingram wasn’t on that list. Stiffening involuntarily, Finnick decided that he didn’t like this. 

Haymitch gave the Two victor an unamused smirk. “Sorry that I didn’t live up to your standards yet again. It must have been unbearable to watch for a Career, all that lack of poise.”

Lyra’s face hardened more, if that was even possible. “I have always hoped to receive good news from Twelve,” she said, clipped. “You always had it in you to do well with more discipline. One or two victors shouldn’t have been out of question in all those years. But,” she added irritably before Haymitch could laugh and tell her that she clearly hadn’t been to Twelve in too long, “I only ever heard about your growing love for the bottle.” 

“But,” Haymitch almost rolled it off his tongue. “I never slept with a tribute.” 

Something very dangerous appeared in Lyra’s eyes, telling Finnick she had lines of her own that she wouldn't have crossed. 

“So I assume I won’t have to introduce you to Finnick, but I don’t believe the two of you have ever met,” Haymitch added swiftly, nodding at Finnick. 

Then he put his hand around Finnick and held on to him just a little too long before he let his hand slip away. 

Lyra’s eyes flickered there. 

It was an unsubtle clue that even an ignorant Capitol citizen would have known to read. 

Finnick straightened up a little. _Well_. Okay. So this was happening. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said, belatedly. He offered Lyra his hand, not terribly surprised to learn that her grip could have broken another man’s fingers. Immediately, she let go again. Tension was so thick around them that he could feel it on his skin. “Are you mentoring the girl?” 

“Would have to be the girl to keep the rumors at bay,” Haymitch breathed. 

Lyra pressed her lips together briefly. 

“The female is mine,” she concurred. 

Then very surprisingly, she said in a tone that conveyed how little she liked doing so, but she knew it needed to be said, “I hope you know that it was never my intention to cause you any pain.”

“And yet,” Haymitch easily replied. 

It was clear he was refusing to let this be anything but a power play. 

Lyra pulled herself up, straightening her shoulders. Obviously, she had decided that she’d tried hard enough. 

“Very well,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, then. Mentoring protocol in Two advises mentors not to mingle with opposing districts, as you might remember.” She nodded at both of them edgily. “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

“I forgot what a bitch she could be,” Haymitch breathed when she was gone, still so very close to Finnick in that unusual public display of how they were together.

Finnick fleetingly considered that Two could have resurrected Ingram because she was the one with all the dirt on District Twelve. Then, he discarded that thought. They wouldn’t take Twelve that seriously as a contender, and what was the worst headline they could feed the press, anyway? _Finnick Odair slept with another person,_ might get them in trouble with Snow, but that wouldn’t matter to Two. Further proof that Finnick couldn’t keep it in his pants wasn’t headline material to anybody. 

This wasn’t about that, anyway. This was about Lyra Ingram coming back to the Capitol, Lyra who had mentored Haymitch. Two always got far even in the Games they didn’t win, and Lyra would be there through it all until Final Eight and Final Four while Katniss loomed on the screens wearing Maysilee Donner’s Mockingjay pin. 

Haymitch didn’t usually have a problem with flashbacks, not as long as it wasn’t dark and he hadn’t just woken up from a nightmare, but it had been Haymitch himself who had once, a long time ago, reminded Finnick that symptoms were subject to change. After the emotional rodeo of the last two years, Finnick should know. 

Haymitch let out a long breath, a breath so shaky that Finnick could hear it shuddering. 

“Sure would be nice to show her that I’m not actually that big a failure,” he said. “Or show it to me.” 

A cold, uneasy feeling of foreboding spread in Finnick’s guts.


End file.
